Curse on the Ground?

There are some who believe the Bible presents a terribly negative view of the world as full of sin and tribulation. What about its beauty, its underlying value as an ecosystem made of ecosystems?

Well, the Bible doesn't deny the majesty of the world. If God created it, then it is likely more majestic than we know. What it has become, though, is a reflection of us, of fallen humanity. As such, it bears our curse:

And to Adam he [God] said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. All your life you will sweat to produce food, until your dying day. Then you will return to the ground from which you came. For you were made from dust, and to the dust you will return." (Genesis 3:17-19)

There is an interesting play of words here. The Hebrew language in which Genesis was written calls humanity adam, and the ground adama. So Adam, the man under judgment because he defied God, finds that the source of his livelihood, the ground (adama) is cursed along with him.

We don't have to see this as some barbaric relic of and ancient culture that saw its God as angry and needing to be appeased. The message here is more profound than that. God made us to belong to him, and we chose to cut our ties with him, sideline him, go our own way. If, as we shall see, the ground is a reflection of we who walk on it, then the fact that we walked away from God and received his judgment on us, means that the ground had to suffer too.

It's majestic, but now it bears our fatal flaw.